


In Her Own Shadow

by cathedralvelvet



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Bad Ending, Cheating, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:02:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26533321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathedralvelvet/pseuds/cathedralvelvet
Summary: Sae Niijima comes home to the apartment she shares with Ren to discover that he's been cheating on her with her Shadow -- and worse, that Shadow Sae is intent on taking Sae's place in every other way possible.
Relationships: Kurusu Akira/Shadow Niijima Sae
Kudos: 16





	In Her Own Shadow

It was something that Sae would never have believed, or even understood, if she hadn't already known the truth about so many things. About the concept of Palaces and the idea of people having Shadows. About the Metaverse in general, really. If not for the events that had brought her into Ren's orbit a year ago, Sae wouldn't understand any of this.   
  
And so, she thought, still shell-shocked and unable to drag herself back to an even footing, it was bitterly ironic that the Metaverse was what would take Ren from her in return.    
  
Sae had believed that she had been walking into her own apartment when she had opened the door and entered the same way she had every day. Nothing had seemed out of the ordinary while she had been walking up the stairs or down the hallway to reach the place she had been sharing with Ren since his graduation and return to Tokyo.    
  
But as soon as the door had closed behind her, Sae had heard something that she hadn't been able to ignore, something that had sent a spike of fear up her spine and set her to kick off her heels and run to the bedroom, where the sound had come from.    
  
And that was when everything had taken an abrupt shift away from anything that could ever be labeled as "ordinary."   
  
"Oh, good, she's here," said a voice that triggered that same sensation of terror as the noise from earlier had. Back then, it had been a cry that had been utterly, intimately familiar to Sae, for all that she had never heard it from a distance. A lewd noise that Sae had only ever heard coming from her own mouth, and then only in the deepest throes of ecstasy, always thanks to Ren's loving touch.   
  
But it hadn't been Sae, any more than the woman straddling Ren Amamiya in the middle of the bed he and Sae shared was truly Sae. It was just a woman who looked almost exactly like her, save for a few differences in how they presented themselves. "W-what the...what...what are you..."   
  
The woman who let out a throaty laugh in response to Sae’s query really did look almost exactly like her. The same long, glossy hair. The same curves, which were only further accentuated by her nudity and by the way she was bouncing up and down on Ren’s erect shaft. That sight alone was enough to make Sae’s throat tighten; it was obvious from the cum coating his dick and oozing down his thighs that Ren hadn’t worn protection. How many times had Sae tried to convince him that she was ready -- even eager -- to start a family, and had him claim in response that he was “just being careful for now”?    
  
The laughter filled the room for a long moment, but then finally stopped as Sae’s Shadow -- it was obviously her, going by the tattoos on her shoulder and back, the degree of makeup she was wearing, and the deep, almost glowing gold of her eyes -- sank down on Ren’s cock, taking the whole of its length into her pussy and letting out a groan. “What, hhah, what does it look like I’m doing, you stupid bitch?” She reached down to the junction of her thighs and scooped up a little handful of Ren’s cum, only to raise it back to her face and lick it from between her fingers. “ _I’m_ pleasing  _my_ man. Try using your eyes, please.”   
  
Her pulse pounding desperately in her ears, Sae shook her head. “No, I mean...here...what?” She was faced with too many questions, and the one answer she had already gotten felt like too much of a slap in the face for her to process it as fast as she needed to. “How are you here? Ren, what are you...why is…”    
  
Ren only looked at her for a moment, but that was long enough. Sae felt a chill at the way his eyes almost seemed to pass right through her. Like she barely registered for him. Or like she wasn’t there. “R-Ren?”   
  
“Did I say you could talk to my man?” Sae’s Shadow used one hand to push herself up, Ren’s still-erect shaft popping free of her cunt with a lewd sound. Any hopes Sae had had of the little display being at an end were dashed when the Shadow instead leaned forward until she was on her hands and knees. “You haven’t earned that. Not like I have. Not the ways I can. And now you’re never going to get the chance. Ren, take me the way you did the other night.”    
  
“Sure,” Ren said, suddenly grinning, responsive and eager to please in a terrifying contrast to the way he had un-reacted to Sae’s pleading. “Spread those cheeks, though. Tell me just how bad you want it, Sae.”   
  
Hearing Ren call the Shadow by her name sent a spike of anger down Sae’s back, but she didn’t have time to really react or make it clear how angry she was before the other Sae -- her Shadow, she corrected herself angrily -- immediately complied.    
  
“Mmh, I want to feel that thick alpha  _cock_ of yours in my needy asshole, Ren,” she said, her voice threatening to give way to a moan seemingly the entire time. She kept her eyes -- thickly shadowed, just as they had been the one time Sae had ever seen her Shadow self previously -- locked on Sae as she spoke. “I want you to give it to me hard, the way my  _inferior_ self is too scared to let you.” She wiggled her tush in the air, keeping her hands clasped on either ass cheek and making sure to keep them spread wide enough apart that Sae was sure the other woman’s asshole was all too visible.    
  
It was a shocking display, something that left Sae’s mind clouded with doubt as she watched Ren lean forward, line up his admittedly impressive cock, and begin to push its bulbous tip past the Shadow’s rear entrance.    
  
"Ren, why are you doing this?" Sae asked, unable to tear her eyes off the look of dawning bliss on her Shadow self's face. Bliss, and, as her eyes regained focus in the wake of Ren's initial penetration of her ass, a calculated cruelty as she regarded Sae herself. "And how -- how is she even here? I don't understand what's going on."   
  
"I'm not the one who doesn't belong here, you second-rate prude," Shadow Sae got out, her voice unsteady as Ren began to establish a rhythm in the way he pushed into her, in the way he took her from behind. It was clear that she was being kept from focusing entirely on her words by the raw pleasure of it, and for the first time, Sae genuinely wondered what anal felt like. She had always been adamant that it was something she didn't care to try, and she had been careful to shut Ren down hard the few times he had ever brought it up. But now it was like she was seeing herself mirrored, and the pleasure on her Shadow's face, twisting her lips and occasionally eclipsing even the hate that the Shadow clearly felt for her, was shocking. "You're in my domain.    
  
"I...what?" Sae didn't know how to feel about anything that she was hearing, and a part of her wanted to run away from all of this. But she was terrified that if she turned away, she would lose her last and only chance to do anything about this.    
  
"God, you're fucking slow." The Shadow began to rock herself back against Ren's thrusts, letting out hot little grunts as the act made her take his cock even deeper into her ass than before. "We're in the Metaverse. This is my palace."    
  
"W-what?" Sae realized that she sounded like a broken record, knew that she was failing completely to keep up, but the sight of Ren cheating on her...the pleasure her Shadow was taking from something so demeaning...she was having trouble thinking straight. "Your palace -- your palace was at the --"   
  
"I moved it, you dumb bitch," the Shadow said, any patience gone. Now she was throwing herself back harder, shoving her body back ass-first to meet every last one of Ren's increasingly brutal thrusts. Sweat was actually starting to stand out on her face and arms. She could see it forming in a sheen across even the Shadow's breasts, which jiggled visibly as they dangled beneath her frenetically moving form. "A Shadow's palace is a place of great importance to them. Why would any place be more important to me than my future husband's?" She let out a moan, and Sae felt something in her heart clench painfully as Ren threw himself forward over the Shadow, nearly pinning her down to the bed as the final thrust brought him to an obvious climax. Sae saw his thick seed running in hot rivulets down the Shadow's thighs, and suddenly understood that they had been doing this for some time before she got back home.    
  
"Besides," Ren finally said, his voice a little exhausted, "I got tired of having to go there every single night. Sometimes during the day, too. This is much more convenient," he said, meeting Sae's eyes for a moment before reaching down to cup her Shadow's chin and tilt her head to the side.   
  
The sight that followed was like a knife to Sae's heart: Ren leaning over her Shadow and capturing her mouth -- lipstick unnaturally perfect -- in a hot, passionate kiss. Both of the lovers -- for that was obviously what they were -- moaned into the kiss. They only broke it a moment later, when Ren pulled out of Sae's Shadow, only to roll her over onto her back, then line his cock up with her pussy once again.    
  
“Every...every night,” Sae said in what was nearly a whisper. It hurt just to think about, as Sae really started to wrap her head around the enormity of what had been going on beneath her nose. "How...how long. Ren, please, tell me you haven't been --"   
  
"I don't know, months?" Ren said as he began to push his full length -- Sae had never seen him keep it up this well after what had, from the state of the Shadow's thighs, to have been several climaxes -- into the other Sae's already thoroughly lubricated cunny. A moment later, he reached down with one hand to grip and squeeze at one of her breasts, but when he made as if to grab the other as well, the Shadow instead took his hand in one of her own and clasped it tightly as she let out another hot, hungry groan. "A few months, at least."   
  
"Long enough that I finally decided it was time to move in with him. I suggested, hhah...ahnnhh, I, I suggested moving my palace to his apartment, and he thought it was a great idea. It took a little doing, but we figured it out eventually." Shadow Sae tilted her head back over the edge of the bed to look at Sae, her expression torn between bliss and malice. "One of my sister's friends, the one who's good with computers, helped make it happen. I think she's going to be one of my maids...hmm! Nnh! Of honor..."   
  
"She isn't your -- " Sae bit her lip as Ren all but jackhammered the woman between them. He was putting more energy into fucking the Shadow than he'd shown in the bedroom in weeks. But then again, she understood as she started to connect the dots, was it really so surprising that Ren had been lacking in stamina, if he'd been cheating on her virtually every day for months? "She isn't your sister, and he's not marrying you, you --" Sae couldn't make herself think of a word harsh enough, any more than she could figure out what to do about any of this.    
  
"Oh, yes he is," Sae's Shadow said a moment later, before taking her free hand -- the one not holding one of Ren's -- and wiggled her fingers at Sae, her hand and arm occasionally twitching during the display as Ren pounded her.    
  
When Sae saw, and understood, what the Shadow was trying to show her, any words that had been ready to bubble up out of her froze in her throat. She didn’t think she could even manage to breathe.    
  
“That’s right. See, Ren, this is part of why I wanted to make it official before we told her,” the Shadow said as she pulled her hand back, using it to instead grip one of her thighs and pull her leg up, letting Ren strike her from another angle that made the Shadow groan with barely contained glee. “I know better than you do, Ren. I know you’ve been frustrated -- hhahah, hhah, I can feel how frustrated you’ve gotten with her, I can feel how pent up you are every night -- but I know better than you do how dumb she is.  _That_ Sae only understands things when they get shoved right in her face. I love you, and I love the ring, but that’s why I wanted it on my finger this soon, Ren,” Sae said. “It makes a nice, solid visual aid, and your stupid, bitchy prude of an ex girlfriend needed the best one we could give her. Now she understands.”    
  
"I probably shouldn't let you be this cruel," Ren said, his voice ragged with exhaustion and want, "but fuck, it's just so hot."   
  
The words were more daggers for Sae's already unprotected heart. It hurt. This hurt, and she could barely grasp the enormity of how her life had gone wrong. Did she deserve any of this? She had turned her life around thanks to her sister and Ren, she had started working to make the world a better place, but somehow this, this horror show felt like a punishment for her past mistakes. And one far out of pace with anything she had ever actually done.    
  
"I can't believe you actually thought that Ren still cared about you," the Shadow said, hooking her upraised leg around Ren's waist and using the hand that had been holding it up to instead pull Ren's hand from her breast and grasp it the same way she was holding his other. With their hands clasped, with how close Ren was leaning down against her as he continued to rail her, what they were doing together looked incredibly intimate. And that only made all of this hurt all the more. "You know why he's barely been home at the same time as you? For me, bitch." She wrapped her other leg around Ren's waist, and soon Ren started to slam into Sae's shadow with a greater level of ferocity than he had shown yet. "He's been organizing his entire days and weeks around seeing me. He's been making his life harder than it had any reason to be, just so that he could spend more time in my arms. You've never been his real girlfriend. And you never had a chance of being...his...fiance...oh, god, Ren, R-Reh, eheh, REN!"    
  
The sheer mess of what Sae was feeling couldn't grow or become harsher as she watched her Shadow writhe and scream through her climax. She had already had her heart torn out. Her hopes for the future had already been thoroughly, brutally dashed. How could she care about anything else? She couldn't even feel angry anymore.   
  
It didn't even stir her to see Ren spend himself in her Shadow again. When he had been so reasonable about telling her why it was important to be careful, why planning for kids needed to happen later. When he'd been careful to use a condom the few times in the last weeks that he'd been with her at all. It couldn't really matter in comparison, when she had lost everything. When she had lost him.   
  
Knowing that he could possibly get off to this, that he could enjoy the cruelty her Shadow had directed at her, didn't make losing him hurt less.    
  
"Do, hhah, do you think this is enough?" Ren said, slumped over Sae -- over Sae's Shadow. Her shadow. The shadow having Ren didn't make her more real. Right?   
  
"I think it should be, but I'm not afraid to dig her a little deeper, just to be sure." Sae's Shadow rolled over after Ren pulled out of her, then crawled forward on the bed just a little, teetering on the edge before seizing Sae by the front of her shirt’s collar and yanking her down and forward. Sae couldn’t even really muster the energy to fight it. She just met the Shadow’s golden, oppressive gaze, and felt the other woman’s breath on her face.    
  
“Here’s the score, ‘Sae,’” the Shadow said, her voice mocking as she said Sae’s name.    
  
"Ren is mine. He's always been mine. I've taken his cock and given him pleasure in ways that you were too much of a nasty little prude to ever try. I've taken more of his seed than you ever will, and the only thing stopping me from bearing his children is you still having your foot in the door, so to speak, in that body. Well, you need to step back and let me slam the door in your face, because I deserve it way more than you do. I can do much more as you, as Sae, than you ever can."   
  
There was something hypnotic about the way Sae was speaking, about the golden light in those inhuman eyes. Sae found herself panting as she listened, felt her skin growing hot beneath her clothing. "You're," she breathed out, "you're wrong --"   
  
"Your sister's friend? Futaba? She helped me set all this up. I couldn't have moved my palace here, and gotten you in, without her. Her other little friends aren't in on the loop, but that's fine, they don't need to be. They won't know the difference, after, and they only care about Sae Niijima as Makoto's sister and Ren's girlfriend. And eventually wife, now," Sae said, once again putting her engagement ring on display.    
  
No, not Sae. Sae's Shadow. Her Shadow. Sae was Sae. Sae was the real one, Sae knew she was the one that mattered...if not to Ren, than to --   
  
"Makoto knows too," the Shadow said a moment later, as if she could read every thought that was passing through the other woman's head. And maybe she could. She was a part of Sae, she was as much Sae as Sae -- no, wait -- "She's loved Ren for even longer than you have, but stepped aside because she wanted you to be happy. Well, everyone gets to be happy, once you're gone. Once Ren and I are married, neither of us will have any problem with Makoto sharing our bed. She can move back in and never have to move back out. And," Sae said, leaning toward Sae and smiling salaciously, "she has other reasons to be happy about me taking the reins. She's wanted me ever since she saw me in my Palace. And I've enjoyed her, but I think she'll be even better in bed once she doesn't have another sister to feel guilty about keeping secrets from."   
  
Sae felt nausea roll in her gut, felt confusion reign in her mind as the full import of the revelations that Sae was dishing out hit her in the chest, more knives slammed into her heart from point blank range. "You're lying, she wouldn't --"   
  
"She begged us to shove you out of our body faster, bitch," Sae said. The Shadow said. Sae said. Right now, to Sae, to the woman who had lost everything and was losing the last argument she would ever have, in or out of the courtroom, the other Sae felt more real, more vibrant, than Sae herself ever had. She had trouble even so much as breathing in the other Sae's presence. Some part of her felt like the air around them was the other Sae's by right. She deserved it more. "Your sister wants you gone. Your ex wants you gone. And you know what? I'm tired of waiting for my chance. It's nice to have my palace here, but it'll be even more convenient to have my body as my own, with you out of the way. So give up. Now."   
  
Sae trembled in the face of all this, of everything, of the sheer weight of just how thoroughly she had lost here. "I don't even know how," was all she could say. Not 'No, I won't,' not some final attempt to win Ren back or to get out of here and warn anyone who would listen that her body was about to not even be her own anymore. Just a surrender.   
  
Sae leaned in close, her black lipstick glistening as she drew dangerously close to Sae. "All you have to do is kiss me."   
  
The worst part was, there was some perverse part of Sae that honestly wanted to, not just so that this would be over, but because there was an allure to her other self. A dangerous appeal, one that came from deep down, from the understanding that she really did wish she could be like the other, realer Sae. A woman willing to take more risks, to give more of herself. She found herself unable to breathe, unable to look anywhere but at her doppleganger's lips.   
  
"Don't wait any longer, you poor piece of unwanted trash," Sae said, and her tone was almost loving. "Think of it this way. You get to have one last indirect kiss from Ren, one last chance to taste his seed. It's more than you deserve, but I'll let you have it as a gift."    
  
Sae wasn't thinking when, at the very last, she leaned in and let her lips brush Sae's. But that was enough. The other woman seized Sae by the hair and yanked her harder into the kiss.   
  
Sae had one last, burning moment to understand her inadequacy -- her Shadow had even been a better kisser -- before everything went black.    
  
O O O   
  
"Yes, fuck, yes yes, harder, please!" Sae's voice rang out, blissful and hot, as the bed beneath her and Ren creaked and groaned from the sheer weight and force of the abuse they were putting it through.   
  
Ren slammed into her from behind, giving the woman exactly what she wanted and how she wanted it. He had already blown his load in her three times, after Sae -- not a Shadow anymore, just Sae Niijima, his fiance -- had made it perfectly clear that she expected to conceive as soon as possible, and that he was going to help her with everything he had. He had no complaints.   
  
He had already texted Makoto, and she was on her way, no doubt eager to finally take her place at their side.    
  
On the floor before the bed, the pile of clothing the other Sae Niijima had been wearing before she vanished sat abandoned and forgotten. 


End file.
